A Portrait Of Betsy DeVos Overlooked By Critics And The Media

In an article published this morning by the Detroit News, I examine the beginning of a 30-year journey that Betsy DeVos has taken from mentoring at-risk kids in Grand Rapids, Michigan to becoming the country’s leading voice for education reform. DeVos will go before a Senate committee on Wednesday in a confirmation hearing for her appointment by President-elect Donald Trump as the next secretary of education.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Betsy DeVos

While my Detroit News piece focuses on how DeVos first became involved in school reform, I expand on her work on behalf of children and families below. This provides important context ahead of her confirmation hearing. As I explain in the Detroit News:

Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick, have mentored dozens of children in the Grand Rapids area. They’ve continued to do so over the years even as they have become increasingly involved in state and national efforts to reform education. Recent media coverage in the wake of her nomination has portrayed DeVos as an ideologically-driven, anti-public school crusader, but her work in Grand Rapids and across Michigan paints a different picture, that of a woman devoted to helping kids succeed regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds.

Below is a continuation of the Detroit News article examining the development of Betsy DeVos’ support for school reform and her concern about the status quo in education.

An important point to keep in mind for Betsy DeVos’ nomination comes from a Washington Post op-ed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney published last weekend:

As a highly successful businesswoman, DeVos doesn’t need the job now, nor will she be looking for an education job later. Her key qualification is that she cares deeply about our children and will do everything in her power to offer them a brighter future. She founded two of the nation’s leading education reform organizations and helped open the door to charter schools in her home state of Michigan. I have known her for many years; she is smart, dynamic, no nonsense and committed. That’s why the education establishment is so animated to stop her.

While Betsy DeVos has been successful in business, she recognizes the challenges that many parents face getting their children into schools that will help them succeed. “We knew we had the resources to send our kids to whatever school was best for them. For these parents, however, paying tuition was a real sacrifice,” she told Philanthropy magazine in an interview discussing her early visits to Potter’s House.

In the early 1990s, after years witnessing the struggles of poor families in their own community, DeVos became involved with education policy initiatives supporting charter schools, vouchers, and increased accountability. Education policy in Michigan has long been driven by teachers unions, but reforms have come as urban districts have sought better opportunities for children. Michigan passed its first charter school bill in 1993.

Limited change has since come to education standards and testing. DeVos, who served as the Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman, supported education reform efforts by former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm to raise high school standards and require that all students take a college entrance exam. That legislation passed in 2006. The state has seen gains as the policies have been implemented, and it is more honest with parents about proficiency levels, which have dropped because the state raised standards.

Betsy DeVos has long fought for the state to adopt tax-credit scholarships or vouchers to allow families to escape failing schools, but despite the state’s poor education performance, reform has been an uphill battle. The state constitution still prohibits choice beyond public schools. Accountability is also a one-sided equation. More than 100 charter schools have been closed in Michigan, but no public school has ever been closed. This is despite Detroit charter schools delivering better performance gains than public schools, according to research out of Stanford University.

Today, while Michigan is one of the biggest spenders on education, it is one of the ten worst states in performance. Fewer than 20 percent of high school juniors are college- or career-ready.

“It continues to be an uphill climb for us in Michigan to create additional educational opportunities for at-risk kids, since it means upsetting entrenched interest groups and taking on the defenders of the status quo who usually put adult conveniences above student needs,” said Gary Naeyaert, the executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, which is partially funded by DeVos.

“For decades we’ve been chipping away at the education monopoly and fighting for more choice, improved quality and greater accountability. Yet the combination of disjointed governance, archaic constitutional language and a toxic political environment have made it more difficult here than in other states,” Naeyaert continued.

Fighting for Better Schools in Other States

While Michigan continues to put roadblocks in the path to reform, DeVos has played a key role in advocacy for other states to adopt choice and accountability. She is the chair of the American Federation for Children, which was active in bringing reform to states like Florida and Louisiana.

In Florida, 43 percent of students now attend a different school than they are geographically assigned, and those students tend to be from lower-income and minority areas. One of those students, Denisha Merriweather, wrote for The Hill: “The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which served 95,000 children from low-income and working-class households in the state this year, turned my life around.” She explained, “School was such a nightmare so early in my life that I managed to fail third grade twice before my godmother took me in and decided that I needed a change. That change was Esprit de Corps Center for Learning, a private school in Jacksonville that was accessible to us only because of a scholarship that helped my godmother afford the tuition.”

Merriweather, who says she is not a Republican, believes Betsy DeVos can help lead important reforms nationwide. “[T]hose who cast Betsy DeVos’ support for school choice as an attack on public education disregard the extent to which the status quo is often a dead end for students like me,” she argues.

Louisiana also has a rapidly-growing school choice program. There are now 74,000 students enrolled in charter schools, and 8,000 students receive previously-unavailable scholarships to private schools in order to leave their failing public schools.

“Charter school laws and the scholarship program were passed because Betsy DeVos led,” writes Phillip Stutts, an education policy expert who has worked with DeVos. “She wasn’t dogmatic about the vouchers or charter schools; she was dogmatic on making sure we empowered parents to make the best education decision for their kids.”

“From Their Hearts, They Want to Improve Kids’ Lot in Life”

While Betsy DeVos has gradually shifted much of her attention beyond mentoring children in Grand Rapids, her devotion remains to the individual students who will benefit from better schools.

Dick DeVos, Betsy’s husband, ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, losing to Granholm. After the race was over, Betsy challenged him to do something he was passionate about. Dick, an aviation enthusiast, was inspired by a story he has told many times since: Summer